An Episcopalian
walks into a bar, hikes up on the barstool and says to the bartender, “Gimme a
scotch on the rocks.” The bartender slides the drink across, and replies,
“So…what have you been up to lately.” The person on the barstool replies,
“Well, let’s see, I committed adultery last week.” Or maybe, “Oh I killed my
neighbor last night because I covet his wife.” I wish I had a great punch line
for what sounds like the beginning of a joke. But there isn’t a punch line
because most of us wouldn’t boast about breaking that particular commandment.
How
recently have you heard this happen though, and not even in a bar? Or maybe
even done it yourself, just like I have. Two people drag out their iPhones or Smart
Phones or pocket calendars. The conversation goes something like this, “I just
don’t know when we can get together. My schedule’s completely full. I don’t
even have time to sleep.”
There
we go, boasting about breaking one of the commandments. “Remember the Sabbath
day and keep it holy.”[1] Our
reading from Exodus continues, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any
work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your
livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh
day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.”[2]
I am hardly
suggesting we return to the rigid and uncompromising Sabbath of our Protestant
forbears. What I am suggesting is that we are desperately in need of a Sabbath.
A time each week to slow down, hush up, and turn off.
Many of us, even
in retirement, are too busy to rest, to enjoy the gift of time God has given
us. This gift of time, of slowing down, of being quiet, and turning off the
busy world, is how God draws us back to God’s self. It is in quiet and rest that
we so often find our selves again as the people God has created us to be.
Perhaps the
reason, then, for Jesus overturning the temple tables, has to do with calling
the temple and its people back to its reason for being, its reason for being
created: as a house of worship and a place in which time stands still before
the living God.
And, this
Sunday, when we are halfway through Lent, is a good time to remind ourselves of
who we are and the covenant we have made with God, in particular the covenant
to rest so we have time and energy to find the blessings in all the
commandments.
The Ten
Commandments, especially the commandment to rest, to have a Sabbath, have
become “the ten suggestions” in contemporary society. We need to remind
ourselves the Ten Commandments are the word of God, given by God, as part of an
agreement sought by God, between God
and God’s people.
The Ten
Commandments are not law in the sense we know secular law. The Ten Commandments
are a law of redemption and mercy rather than a law of judgment. As God
redeemed the nation of Israel from bondage to Egypt, the Ten Commandments are a
gift rather than another kind of bondage. They are a gift of freedom in which
the community can now act; free to form the obedience to which God has called
them. Rather than subjection to Pharaoh or any other despotic leader, we can
now claim our freedom to make a covenant, an agreement, with the Almighty God
who rescues us from bondage.
At
the same time, the Ten Commandments are not something that we can pick and
choose. Since it is the covenant between God and God’s people, the commandments
choose us, rather than us choosing any or all of them. When we are invited into
covenant with God, we do not get to choose what we promise. God does the
inviting. God manages the terms of the contract.
We
are reminded each time we take a Sabbath rest, on whatever day that occurs for
us, that in these Ten Commandments we have words that are living and true,
words of redemption and grace. These words invite us into a “speaking”
relationship with the Living God, in which the commandments laid out from the beginning
continue to speak to us and bless us. Keeping the commandments becomes not a
burden but a blessing.
The Ten
Commandments are living words in a living world, with things to say to us about
how we are dealt with by God, and how we respond. They are living words from a
living God that speak to us about how we treat God, how we treat ourselves and
how we treat our neighbors. The commandments speak to us not from the walls of
the courtroom, nor from the judicial system, but from the mouth of the Living
God, in response to our relationship with God. AMEN.
The Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2018
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